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Uncle And His Detective

  • Imprint: RHCP Digital

  • ISBN: 9781448197477

  • Length: 168  Pages

  • RRP: £7.30

Uncle And His Detective

It begins with the arrival not of a detective, but of disaster: Badfort is for sale, but when Uncle decides to buy it, demolish it, and build a pleasantly appointed park on the site, he is forestalled. Beaver Hateman has sold it cheaply to someone on the condition that he, Hateman, is allowed to stay on as a paying guest. Forgetting that the man who has bought Badfort is certain to regret the "bargain", Uncle tries to console himself by continuing his never-ending exploration of Homeward.

He soon discovers the mysterious Crack House - lair of a vicious and horribly squawking creature, half-bat, half-bird, called Batty - where there are rumours of buried treasure. Uncle is in need of a detective . . .

  • Imprint: RHCP Digital

  • ISBN: 9781448197477

  • Length: 168  Pages

  • RRP: £7.30

Reviews

  • "A riot of nonsense and adventure, may well become a classic in the great English nonsense tradition"

    Observer

  • "Joyously surreal, set in landscapes full of toffee, deferential choirs of badgers, heavenly water-slides and velvet chairs . . . Their pachydermous protagonist governs a benevolent plutocracy- but the books' great joy is the frequent sly and subtle lampooning of his capitalist pomp"

    Guardian

  • "The books are very funny, installing a large cast of unlikely characters . . . in a world of mildly squiffy logic . . . And the illustrations are among Quentin Blake’s best work, scrawls and splotches that finally and unarguably distil character. But most important, this is political satire of a high order — Animal Farm for pre-teens, but wittier and more relevant to our own world"

    Independent

  • "Few books are laugh-out-loud funny; fewer still are the children's books that have you stifling titters on the train . . . Uncle is a brilliantly sustained exercise in nonsense, played with the straightest of faces"

    Financial Times

  • "You ask any class "Who's heard of Alice in Wonderland" and up goes a forest of hands. Uncle is on the same level and should be more widely read and enjoyed"

    The Junior Bookshelf

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About the Author

J. P. Martin

J.P.Martin was born in Scarborough in 1879. He became a Methodist minister in 1902 and served as a missionary in South Africa and as an army chaplain in Palestine in 1918 at the time when Allenby and T.E. Lawrence overwhelmed the Turks. J.P.Martin and his wife Nancy moved circuits every three years and worked among miners and slum dwellers, as well as among the comfortably off. He started telling the Uncle stories before the First World War and in 1934 the writers Stella Martin and R.N Currey urged him to write them down; it took thirty years before they got them accepted by Jonathan Cape in the satire rich sixties. Reviewers welcomed each of the six books as they were published between 1964 and 1973 with comparisons to Edward Lear and Alice. The Observer described him as 'a master in the great English nonsense tradition.' J.P.Martin was 84 when Uncle was published and he charmed everyone on radio and television. He was able to enjoy his late success before he died two years later in 1966.

J. P. Martin

Quentin Blake

Quentin Blake has illustrated more than three hundred books and was Roald Dahl's favourite illustrator. In 1980 he won the prestigious Kate Greenaway Medal. In 1999 he became the first ever Children's Laureate and in 2013 he was knighted for services to illustration.

Quentin Blake

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